In June four years ago, 5G licenses were officially issued in China, and now China’s 5G commercial use has entered a new stage.
According to the China Academy for Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), as of May this year, the total number of 5G base stations in China reached 2.844 million, accounting for 25.3% of the total number of mobile base stations, and the coverage rate of administrative regions above the county level reached 100%, realizing 5G in every county. Among them, China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly built and shared more than 1 million 5G base stations, and China Mobile and China Broadnet have jointly built and shared more than 500,000 700MHz 5G base stations.
On June 27, at China Mobile’s 5G Innovation Technology Innovation Forum, Li Huidi, Vice President at China Mobile, said that the current 5G technology has entered the midfield, and the network construction is complete. The next step is to focus on how to continue to lead in technological innovation, coordinate applications and terminals, and truly maximize the value of 5G networks.
Realize 5G in every county
Up to May this year, China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly built and shared more than 1 million 5G base stations, achieving coverage from cities to rural areas; The 4.9GHz frequency band has achieved continuous coverage of urban areas, counties, and towns across the country.
In addition, the construction of virtual private networks in the 5G industry has accelerated, covering key industries in the national economy. As of March 2023, the total number of 5G industry virtual private networks has exceeded 16,000, covering industries, ports, energy, and medical care; the number of applications of 5G industry virtual private networks in industries such as industry, smart cities, medical care, and education continue to grow and become a new digital base for informatization transformation and upgrading.
Among them, China Mobile is the leader in 5G network construction. Li Huidi introduced that at present, China Mobile’s wireless network has deployed more than 1.7 million 5G commercial base stations, and the population coverage rate exceeds 85%. With the completion of 360,000 5G base stations this year, the population coverage rate will exceed 90%. The number of 5G terminal customers has reached 480 million, the 5G network distribution ratio exceeds 50%, half of the traffic is carried on the 5G network, 5G has become the main network for business development, and 5G commercial cases exceed 23,000.
In addition, the core network can satisfy 580 million users, the proportion of cloud integration capacity exceeds 30%, the scale of network cloud resource pool servers exceeds 170,000, and the number of 5G private network edge nodes exceeds 700. The 5G private network has played an important role in the To B market. Last year, 5G private network revenue exceeded 5 billion RMB.
The transmission network has achieved 952 million IPv6 active connections in the entire network, the proportion of mobile network IPv6 traffic has exceeded IPv4, reaching 53.6%, the inter-provincial bandwidth of CMNet has exceeded 400T, and the bandwidth of the inter-provincial backbone transmission network has exceeded 800T, creating the world’s largest SRv6 backbone network.
Construct deep integration of computing and network
China’s improvement of 5G network construction has also laid the foundation for the further commercial use of 5G technology.
The accelerated pace of 5G commercial use can be seen from the information disclosed by China Mobile. Li Huidi revealed that in the field of wireless networks, China Mobile will focus on promoting the commercial use of 5G new calls, cloud mobile phones, Redcap, and intelligent industry base stations in 2023. In 2024, it will focus on exploring community emergency broadcasting, network-assisted terminal power saving, and introduction and application of multicast broadcasting, and accelerating the development of high-bandwidth and low-latency services.
In the core network, China Mobile plans to increase the proportion of cloud convergence function and capacity to 100% by 2025. In the 2C market, it will complete the deployment of new call network capacity within the year and realize commercialization. In the 2B market, China Mobile has rapidly deployed „secure, sensing and roaming“ dual-domain private network solutions to support governmental enterprises in promoting dual-domain private network projects and expanding into more fields.
In the field of transmission network, China Mobile is oriented to 5G network and network convergence, and builds intelligent, differentiated and large-bandwidth transmission network, including promoting the deployment of G-SRv6, flow detection, APN6 and other technologies, expanding the scope of OXC deployment according to the needs, promoting the maturity and application of hierarchical slicing of IP network and fgOTN technology, accelerating the commercialization of 400G router and OTN, promoting the maturity of 50G PON, focusing on the orderly deployment of key segments, and promoting the commercialization of 400G router and OTN, as well as promoting the maturity of 50G PON, focusing on the deployment of G.654E fiber optic cable.
It should be noted that, in the process of promoting 5G commercialization, China Mobile will focus on the future to promote the construction of computing network deep convergence, integration of China Mobile arithmetic network, AI, blockchain, cloud, digital, network, edge, terminal, and security (ABCDNETS) and other depth of convergence, to provide an integrated service of the new type of information base.
(Source: China Mobile, China Daily, CGTN)
